Tag: tech

The Home Search Process 2004 – Internet is more important for Realtors now than it ever has been.

Looking at the interactive graph here, there is an obvious increase of people who started their home search online. Indeed, the share of people using the Internet has increased by 28% since 2004. In 2013, 48% of first-time home buyers and 40% of repeat home buyers used the Internet in their home search process.Real estate agents are mostly preferred by first-time homebuyers for their initial housing search. Especially last year, there was an increase of the first-time home buyers who asked for the services of a real estate agent. This trend shows how increasingly important is the role of real estate agents when there is limited inventory on the market.

Hover over the line graph to see the distribution for each one of the types of home buyers. If you are interested in a particular type of home buyer, please tap on it (see list on the top right corner of the dashboard).

The Federal Aviation Administration has invited the National Association of Realtors to participate in a working group that will provide input on forthcoming regulations of “unmanned aerial systems,” or drones.

NAR says it will use the opportunity to “educate FAA officials on how Realtors are interested in utilizing this technology safely and responsibly.”

In June, the FAA warned real estate agents who fly their own drones to take pictures or videos of listings that they are not engaged in a “hobby or recreation.” The FAA also provided guidance to hobbyists on the “do’s and don’ts” of flying small unmanned aircraft, citing “recent incidents involving the reckless use of unmanned model aircraft near airports and involving large crowds of people.”

The FAA’s position is that even as it works on the new regulations, it already has the authority to take enforcement actions against real estate agents and others using drones for profit. While the FAA has issued numerous cease-and-desist letters to alleged commercial drone operators, its ability to collect fines against them should it pursue enforcement actions against them remains unclear.

Lawyers with Realogy subsidiary NRT LLC aren’t taking any chances, warning agents who work out of more than 200 offices in the northeastern U.S. not to commission drone photography from vendors until the FAA issues “clearly defined rules” governing the commercial operation of drones. Until that happens, thelawyers said in a July memo, NRT won’t even process or distribute images captured by drones in the affected regions.

NAR says it supports regulations “that would allow members to use this technology safely but that are not overly cumbersome or expensive.”

The trade group expects the FAA to propose regulations in November that would “establish a timeframe” for implementing rules for commercially operated drone flights.

As soon as the sale of his company was announced in 2012, Mike Zhang, who was barely above the legal drinking age at the time, started getting a flood of phone calls.

Wealth managers from some of the largest Wall Street firms — including Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse — started pursuing the freshly minted millionaire. Some even sent him gifts in an effort to woo his business.

But Zhang, now 23 years old, was turned off by their approach.

“When I have a rainy day, I don’t want to talk to an opportunist,” he said.

Zhang instead turned to Andrew Palmer, a managing director at Bel Air Investment Advisors. The two had met in the summer of 2011 at an event where Zhang was being honored with an entrepreneurship award for his success as the founder and CEO of Airsoft Megastore, an online store for lifelike toy guns and plastic BBs used in simulation combat competitions known as airsoft games. It’s sort of like paintball.

He started the company in 2004, when he was just 14, after returning from a trip visiting relatives in China. Zhang found that the airsoft guns and gear were selling for much less in China than they were in the U.S. He convinced his parents to let him import products from China and sell them online.